Lee Atwater, Master of Tactics For Bush and G.O.P., Dies at 40

By MICHAEL ORESKES, Special to The New York Times

Published: March 30, 1991

WASHINGTON, March 29—
Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a major architect of George Bush's Presidential election victory in 1988, died this morning at George Washington University Hospital. He was 40 years old.

He died after a yearlong fight against a brain tumor that struck him at the peak of his political success and power.

In the world of American politics, Harvey LeRoy Atwater, known universally as Lee, was both a product and a symbol of his times. He was one of the Republican Party's best political tacticians, famous and feared for his readiness to attack opponents and his skill in carrying out those attacks. Bush Expresses Profound Sorrow

He was only 37 years old when Mr. Bush named him chairman of the Republican National Committee as a reward for managing the 1988 campaign.

"Barbara and I are heartsick about it," Mr. Bush told reporters today. "Lee was a very close friend to my sons and daughter as well as to Barbara and me."

The President said Mr. Atwater "practiced the art of politics with zeal and vigor," and added, "I was very proud of him, proud to serve with him."

Mr. Atwater was one of the youngest chairmen in the party's history and a principal Republican proponent of the view that his generation, born in the baby boom after World War II, was going to reshape politics.

While he loved to talk in sweeping terms about the shape of the electorate, he was best known for his political street-fighting skills, skills that his critics said included a willingness to distort positions, smear opponents and use racial and ethnic messages.

Mr. Atwater first came to national attention at the age of 29 when he helped Ronald Reagan win the 1980 Republican Presidential nomination as the campaign's political coordinator.

Mr. Reagan, in Washington on Thursday for a speech on gun control, was one of Mr. Atwater's last visitors in the hospital. In Los Angeles, the former President said today: "Lee Atwater was a person who loved his profession and who brought vigor, energy and enthusiasm to the political process. He was a true patriot and public servant who believed in free elections and the democratic process. He never lost the will to fight,"

During Mr. Reagan's first term, Mr. Atwater was approached by one of the men Mr. Reagan defeated, Mr. Bush, to manage his campaign for the Presidency in 1988.

To those who complained that the Presidential campaign he ran for Mr. Bush was empty and unpleasant, Mr. Atwater replied: "We had only one goal in the campaign: to help elect George Bush. That's the purpose of any political campaign. What other function should a campaign have?"

Mr. Atwater's life was built around a single passion: politics. "My entire adult life, I've had exactly one job, which is managing campaigns," he said in 1989, on the day Mr. Bush named him Republican chairman. "I really had two goals in life: one, to manage a Presidential campaign and to be chairman of my party."

But on March 5, 1990, a little more than a year after achieving his second goal, Mr. Atwater collapsed while giving a fund-raising speech for Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. Doctors discovered the brain tumor. The Aggressive Way

Friends said Mr. Atwater, a man known for his fierce energy, handled the tumor the same way he managed political campaigns: choosing the most aggressive course available. Doctors sought to curb the tumor with radiation and chemotherapy.

But by January 1991, the grim toll of the disease was painfully apparent when Mr. Atwater gave a first-person account of his struggle to Life magazine. Those who knew him but had not seen him in many months were stunned by the photographs: the disease and its treatment had altered him beyond recognition. His small, intense, almost hyper-animated face had grown swollen and weary and ineffably sad.

"My campaign-honed strategies of political warfare were simply no match for this dogged opponent," he wrote in Life, in a sad echo of the old flipness of his past. "Cancer is no Democrat."

Mr. Atwater also wrote: "The doctors still won't answer that nagging question of mine: How long do I have? Three weeks. Three months. Three years. I try to live as if I have at least three years, but some nights I can't go to sleep, so fearful am I that I will never wake up again."

He entered the hospital for the last time on March 5 and was said to have been alert in recent weeks.

Clayton Yeutter, who succeeded Mr. Atwater in January as chairman of the Republican National Committee, called him "one of the nation's most outstanding political minds."

Ronald H. Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: "As much of the nation pauses for Passover and Easter weekend, we should all remember the picture of bravery and regained perspective Lee brought us over these past months. We can never let political battles or fights cause us to lose sight of the fullness of our own lives." A Change of Mind

Friends said Mr. Atwater spent his final months searching for spiritual peace. The man renowned for the politics of attack turned to apologies, including one to Michael S. Dukakis, the Massachusetts Governor who was the 1988 Democratic Presidential nominee.